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Topic: TARA4 Recaps -- New Blog (Read 2747 times)

So, yeah. I'll be trying to recap TARA4 relatively close to the actual airdates, and they're going to be on a new blog, which'll cover TAR Asia, TAR US, TAR Australia, and China Rush. There's nothing on the blog yet (I've only just set it up within the past twenty minutes or so), but feel free to bookmark it anyway. I'm already about halfway through the recap for this season's Racers Revealed episode (which, by the way, is going to be one of the snarkiest things I've ever written), and it should be up in the next week or so.

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

No worries. I had like seven or eight different blogs for different shows going at one point, and it was getting too hard to focus on one show. I'm in the process of cutting it down to just three blogs -- TAR, Survivor, and any other episodes/shows I decide to recap collected together. (Also, the latest Blogger update futzed up with my coding on the old blogs -- cutting it down to two posts a page on one blog despite it being set to 50 and ignoring the jump cuts on all of them -- and I'm too lazy to figure it out properly.)

(Will edit this post in a minute for a VERY important reason. You'll see.)

Sneak peek of Episode 1's recap to tide you over while I finish it (gave up on Racers Revealed):

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This season of The Amazing Race Asia is brought to you by the letters AXN and the concept of shameless product placement. Notably, Nokia has been dumped and replaced by the Axiata telecom group, which I'm sure will lead to many interesting tasks in call centres across Asia. Standard Chartered Bank has also been dropped and replaced with Hilton hotels, which will probably make the Pit Stops a bit more comfortable, I suppose. There's nothing worse than trying to sleep and being woken up by a pen on a chain jabbing you in the back.

Richard and Richard are Filipino "sports fans", and are probably my best chance this season to avoid accidentally getting the team members mixed up while recapping, if only for the fact that I can't put the wrong name down unless I decide I need to differentiate between one Richard and the other Richard. Anyway, OneRichard is a model (surprise!), while OtherRichard is a professional basketballer. I still can't figure out which is which, and the fact that they seem to be two halves of the same Richard personality-wise isn't helping, but I can tell you that they do have an impressive collection of ugly beanies. Their heads are like ski season at Lady Gaga's.

Ethan and Khairie are here solely so that the casting people and editors can say "See? We didn't just cast hot people without ignoring their personalities! Look, a fat guy!" Allan tells us they're "self-proclaimed social misfits", and if there's any way to know when people are desperate to fit in, it's when they start claiming how wacky and indie they are. Sigh. They're Malaysian to boot, which I'm sure I could find some deep metaphorical significance in if I cared enough to bother. (Disclaimer: Most of my favourite teams on this show have been Malaysian.) They seem to think it's hilarious to mock people behind their backs. Oh, good. Can't wait to see how long it'll take them to send me hate mail.

Claire and Michelle are from Singapore, and have been given the unfortunate relationship desgination "Rebel Pals". As much as I hate team descriptions that amount to "They Both Have The Same Wacky Job" (ie. things like "Flight Attendants" or "Harlem Globetrotters"), I hate lame pseudo-cutesy things like this even more. It's just unprofessional, in my opinion. Basically, their entire interview clip explains that they've decided that not being able to communicate with their parents makes them "rebels". Rebellious skills apparently involve proficiency with violins. Hmmm. Yeah, not so much. They're trying to look like biker tatts, but they're coming off as Hello Kitty tramp stamps.

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

Probably. Episode 1 was one of the wordier ones I'd written. Aside from an Australian Survivor recap that wound up at 25,000 for a two-hour episode, I usually average about 8000 words an episode.

I kind of like the verbose style, though. I think part of it's because I was originally writing them a la TWoP, and this is the sort of style they were using, but part of it's because I find it hard to get the balance right otherwise -- either I keep the analysis in and it becomes dull, or I keep the snarky comments in and it becomes me bitching and moaning about how everything sucks. I can't win.